The present invention relates to downloading data such as video program material and software or firmware to plural remote subscribers for storage of the data in a storage device operatively connected with a home-entertainment device. More specifically, it concerns the use of existing satellite communications for downloading data to entertainment devices connected to a user""s television, the device having operatively connected thereto a disk drive for mass storage of data and the device controlling certain cable and global network functions made available to subscribers.
Moving data from place to place electronically has become a vast enterprise in modern society. Telephones are used to transport voice signals between callers. Facsimile machines are employed to send documents to remote sites. Computers exchange digital data over modems. Radio signals broadcast audio programming to listeners. Television transmissions convey video signals to viewers in almost every home.
A variety of mechanisms or channels are available to send the different types of data. For instance, telephone calls, facsimile transmissions and modem transfers of digital data all can be completed over plan old telephone service (POTS) lines. Radio and television broadcasts are normally broadcast from transmission towers and satellites and sent over cable systems. With each of these channels, the data carrying capacity, or bandwidth, is governed by the nature of the data normally sent over the channel. Thus, POTS, being adapted to transmit voice data, has a relatively low bandwidth while typical television broadcast channels are relatively high bandwidth in order to convey the high volume of data inherent in a video signal.
In addition to considerations of bandwidth, the type of data that can be transmitted over a given channel is governed by whether or not the channel is bi-directional. Of the three main data transmission systems found in most residencesxe2x80x94telephone, radio frequency broadcast and cablexe2x80x94only telephone is inherently bi-directional. Thus, although other technologies are being developed, the telephone has been the channel of choice when data must be transmitted bi-directionally to and from a residence.
With the advent of the Internet, there has been explosive growth in the number of people that use their phone lines to access digital data from resources available on line. These resources include World Wide Web pages providing access to various types of digital data, such as still images and audio and video content. In some cases, the amount of data to be transferred challenges the bandwidth available on phone lines. In other cases, so many users are accessing the same data, that the separate repetitive transfer of the data to each of the users independently is inefficient.
One system in which both the bandwidth and repetitive transfer issues arise is the WEBTV(copyright) Internet access network. (WEBTV is a registered trademark of WebTV Networks, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.) The WEBTV Internet access network includes a large number of Internet terminals, also referred to as client terminals, and at least one Internet server. While the client terminals can access the Internet directly under some circumstances, the server provides a convenient standardized interface to facilitate access of the Internet by the client terminal. The server also offers supplemental services, such as email, news reports, television program guides and enhanced access to certain Web pages. In the course of carrying out these supplemental services, substantial quantities of individualized or private data, and broadly applicable or public data, must be downloaded to the client terminals.
With the current WEBTV system, supplemental services data is downloaded in advance during low-use periods to the extent possible. For instance, WEBTV client terminals are configured to automatically call in to the server during the night to check for email and receive other information. However, because this process must be individually repeated for each client terminal, substantial telephone costs may be incurred by the subscription user or the service provider or both. In addition, in some cases, the quantity of data to be retrieved is so large that long periods of time are required to complete the download.
Known download techniques are data volume and bandwidth limited, the former by remote entertainment device semiconductor memory capacity, and the latter by use of POTS or other low-bandwidth content and software data channels. High-volume data such as a) video data referred to herein as content, or b) operating or applications system software upgrades referred to herein as software, often need to be downloaded from a subscription service provider, or server, to distributed plural remote users at subscriber sites where home entertainment devices exist. It is desirable to provide such a high-speed, high-volume conveyance without further taxing POTS or ISDN, which may be thought of as low-speed, two-way conveyances (the former being voice grade (xe2x89xa6approximately 50 kilobits/second (kbps)) and the latter being only somewhat above voice grade (xe2x89xa6approximately 100-200 kbps). This is as compared with high-speed, one-way satellite broadcast conveyances, the download rate from of which may be more than approximately 1-4 megabits/second (Mbps).
Such high-volume data download may be done via existing satellite broadcast service providers in a high-bandwidth, one-way communication to all. Alternatively, such data download may be done via other broadcast transmission methods such as cable or digital television broadcasts. All subscribers, or clients, will receive the download, whether it is of video or other content data to be stored to non-volatile memory for later viewing, or software upgrade data to be stored to ROM for optional use as the client""s operating system (OS). In the case of a software upgrade, each client must decide whether and how to implement the upgrade, as by executing a configuration or other script the data might include. Thus, the low-speed, bi-directional conveyances such as POTS and ISDN are not further taxed by a satellite-based approach as described herein.
Two aspects of the invention may be summarized as including transmission download of data to plural remote clients of content or software upgrades or alternative versions (e.g. a beta version of some new software release may be tested optionally and feedback solicited from a user of the client for the benefit of the software developer). Optionally provided are pre-download scheduling of one or more future download sessions and post-download remote scripted software execution by the remote clients. For purposes of more efficient use of the transmission link, low-volume scheduling information or content are transmitted within designated narrow-bandwidth sub-channels or trickle streams allocated within the broad bandwidth of the transmission channel and such allocation may be dynamic to vary the allocation based upon relative high-volume, high-speed and low-volume, low-speed demands.
The invention is implemented in software residing primarily in the server computer connected with the transmission provider. The software schedules allotted bandwidth within the broadcast band of the transmission link and formats high-volume data for transmission within suballocation channels logically devised therein. Client software at the plural distributed home entertainment device sites reserves capacity on disk and receives such transmission data for storage thereon, optionally executing a downloaded execution script that may reconfigure the client software so that new options and features are available at the client site for operational (e.g. OS, application, graphic user interface (GUI) or other software that runs the home entertainment device such as a television set-top box) enhancements or content (e.g. video) offerings. It will be appreciated that downloaded content may include text, audio or video files, hypertext mark-up language (HTML) or other ISP-provided pages or images, pay-per-view (PPV) movies, a cable provider""s electronic program guide (EPG), etc.